In the ever changing online world, content can be ephemeral. One group to which this can pose problems is intellectual property rights owners. Certain intellectual property rights, such as trademark and copyright rights, may be infringed by a particular web site, posting, or advertisement for a short or undefined period of time. For example, a trademark may be infringed by an advertisement that only appears to some visitors of a particular site.
For a rights owner, policing their rights can be a difficult task. In addition to the non-trivial task of locating the potentially infringing content, the intellectual property rights owner can face the additional burden of convincing the web site owner to remove the content in a timely manner. In the situation in which the web site owner hosts content from a number of clients, such as a web site owner posting third-party advertisements, the web site owner must balance the legal rights of the intellectual property rights owner against the right of its client to advertise as they choose. Manually evaluating each complaint can be a time consuming process that introduces significant delay between the time of the initial complaint and the time at which a decision is made whether to remove the content about which a complaint has been lodged.